The dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo accumulates 2,090 political prisoners from April 18, 2018 to February 10, 2023, according to the most recent report by the Follow-up Mechanism for Nicaragua (Meseni), of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). ). All have suffered torture in the context of the sociopolitical crisis that has plagued the country for the past five years.
People deprived of their liberty for political reasons have been subjected to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, according to complaints from the inmates after their release, their relatives while they were in prison, and local and international human rights organizations.
Related news: Political prisoners released from Nicaragua receive an award for “defenders of justice”
These tortures include permanent interrogation, nail removal, beatings, violence and rape, torture by suspension, dry or wet suffocation, simulation of executions (murders), among others, according to the report “The deprivation of liberty and the imposition of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment as a mechanism to generate terror in the population» of the Nicaragua Nunca Más Collective.
imprisoned and tortured
The released and exiled politician Julia Hernández was one of the more than 200 women political prisoners that the regime accumulates in five years of crisis. She has suffered prison twice, the first time she was captured on November 30, 2019. At that time she was linked to the opposition figure José Isaías Ugarte, known as “Chabelo”, shot dead by the Ortega Police.
In that arrest she was locked up in the police station of the department of Masaya. In that place she was tied up with her arms up and with the tips of her feet touching the ground, they asked her to hand over “Chabelo.”
reported to Article 66 that the then police chief of Masaya, Commissioner Ramón Avellán, hit her all over her body with a bottle full of water while she was tied up. She was also sexually abused by police officers. Days later she was released.
Drugged with drugs in “El Chipote”
Hernández was arrested for the second time on January 7, 2021, and exiled to the United States on February 9, 2023, this time along with Eduardo José Morales, also released and exiled that same day. When she was arrested, she was detained for 13 days at the Judicial Assistance Directorate (DAJ), known as “El Chipote.” From the first day she was tortured with psychoactive drugs.
They gave the woman four pills, two of them for the illnesses she suffers from and another two that she doesn’t know what they were, but that produced hallucinations and kept her drugged. She received one ration in the morning and another in the afternoon.
If the political prisoner refused to take the pills, the guards at “El Chipote” threatened her with not receiving the food that her mother brought daily for her. When she resisted she was forced to consume them.
After those 13 days, she was transferred to the Comprehensive Women’s Penitentiary Establishment (EPIM) in Tipitapa. The woman affirms that she was subjected to psychological torture: she did not receive regular visits from her family, they prevented her from attending masses in the EPIM chapel and They limited the patio sun hours.
He explained that several common prisoners received a pardon as a “reward” for beating the political hostages, which was offered by the prison authorities to the prisoners. They acted with impunity.
Crimes against humanity
The Nunca Más Nicaragua Collective affirms that torture has generated serious consequences for its victims; wearing them down emotionally and physically, so its effects are, even in many cases, permanent.
“The practice of torture in the country involves multiple state and parastatal agents of various levels and hierarchies, being implemented and allowed by all the powers of the State, so it can be said that it is a transversal and inter-institutional practice,” the organization highlights. of human rights.
«… impunity in torture has made these acts endure and establish a state of terror and de facto exception. The crimes of torture are crimes against humanity and are imprescriptible, so in a Nicaragua hundreds of agents will have to pay for their crimes,” he adds.
